New EV owner here. We charge at home so I don’t need to use them, but stores nearby have chargers. I tried them to see how they work. They are often broken.
One store has a Volta charger (free!). It worked great the first time; the next time I went it was broken.
Walmart has an Electrify America fast charger. The first time I went, 1 of 3 was not working. The next time I went, 1 of 3 was not working, but it was a different one.
Was I unlucky, or are these charging networks unreliable? Has it been getting better or worse over time?
Right now it’s not good, but NACS was also just announced. Part of that announcement included adapters, which should start to become commonplace soon. They do exist, and it looks like they’re $200. Some supercharger locations also have one.
At the risk of sounding like Black Mirror, some chargers will have adapters, others will expect you to bring your own. I plan on getting one when they become reasonably available, probably next year.
But note that there are some additional minor wrinkles, such as battery chemistry, voltage, and adapter limits that we may have to deal with until everything standardizes.
It will get better though, and I think it’ll be pretty soon
It will get better but I think soon is 10 years away. We don’t even have common charge ports on phones and legislation is not going to give advantage to a single specific company yet.
10 years is a long time, almost the lifespan of most cars. By that time there will be very few exceptions. Almost every car and every charger will be NACS.
But “good enough” will happen much sooner, where most cars can use NACS (via adapter) and most stations will have adapters to J1772/CCS.
At 10 years, I expect most stations will stop having adapters, since few cars will need them.
The average age of cars is 12.5 years in the US. 10 years isn’t much for cars.